TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY. 91 



Surely nothing can justify the substitution of these 

 names for that of Aristotle. Dr. Martineau ex- 

 plains that in the two contemporaries, Plato and 

 Aristotle, " the divergence of tendency which we 

 desire to notice is too near its commencement to 

 be very striking and conspicuous." But it is a 

 received logical principle that a point of difference 

 is best examined in two cases which most closely 

 resemble one another in everything else ; and as 

 for the divergence being " too near its commence- 

 ment" we would suggest that in that mediaeval 

 period, which Dr. Martineau, like many other 

 writers, dismisses in a few lines, the divergence can 

 be clearly traced, and all the more clearly because 

 Plato and Aristotle had, by a little ingenuity, been 

 reduced to a common denominator in the doctrinal 

 system of the Schools. On the other hand, the 

 contrast between Plato on the one hand, and 

 Descartes, Malebranche, and Spinoza on the 

 other, is rendered almost impossible by the fact 

 that, in the day of these later theorists, thought 

 had passed through the discipline of Christianity 

 and the lawlessness of a reaction from it. 



This change in the conditions of ethical and 

 metaphysical problems Dr. Martineau is fully 

 aware of and states most strongly. "The whole 

 complexion of thought and language on ethical 

 subjects," we are told, "alters on crossing the 

 line from heathendom to Christendom." " Nature, 



